Men who died young and women who didn’t – a not uncommon scenario here in the graveyard. So who were the Eastwoods? What was their story? Who rests here under this laid-flat lancet with an unusual rose emblem carved at the top?
This family’s stories start with two people and two extremes. John Eastwood was born in March 1839 at Ramsden Wood in Walsden. He was illegitimate; his mother Elizabeth was a cotton winder who was only baptised two years before his birth. A baptism in anticipation of a marriage? If so the marriage never came, only John, whose father was never named. Four years later Elizabeth had a daughter named Mary, and two years after that she married mechanic Thomas Law. Their marriage was short – Elizabeth died three months later, and John was left to be raised by his grandfather James (his grandmother Jane had also died around the same time). Thomas Law must have left some small impression on him, however, as John became an iron turner after he left school.
Lucy Stansfield was luckier. She was four months older than her future husband, having been born in November 1838, to Charles and Sally (Ratcliffe) Stansfield of Pexwood. There are many members of her family buried at Christ Church as is often the case, and some of the conditions of Lucy’s childhood will be explained in those stories. Lucy herself was, just like John, still a scholar at the age of twelve on the 1851 Census. At least she was able to continue in school for some time before entering the world of work, which itself was aspirational given the labouring class her parents belonged to. She became a power loom weaver after leaving school. She and John were married in August 1861, but for all the additional schooling Lucy received, at that point she was either unable (or too shy?) to sign her own name on their marriage certificate.
One day shy of nine months later, their first child, Emily, was born. The couple had five children in total – four girls and a boy. Only one died young, their daughter Ada, who died in 1869 when she was just three and a half years old. The others thrived, or at least thrived at first. John’s work took him out of Todmoden for a while and Ada’s death actually occurred in Rochdale. The family were living in Castleton in 1871, on the other side of Rochdale from Todmorden, but by the time of their fourth daughter Clara’s baptism in September 1871 they were back here and living at Prince Street.
When John Henry was born in 1872, he had three older sisters – Emily, Alice and Clara – and things seemed to be going well for the family on paper. Medical records don’t often lie though, and there might have been a reason beyond simply working for the family to come back to Todmorden and to end up moving back to Walsden and Stoneswood, near Lucy’s family. John had contracted phthsis and his health was declining. Ada was soon to have some company in the grave here.
In December 1873, after a three year battle to slow its progress, the disease caught up with John and he died at the age of 34. Lucy’s sister Sarah was at his side at the end.
The family carried on. Lucy did not remarry but went back to work as a cotton weaver. On the 1881 Census we find evidence of more family trouble: Emily is marked as “lame”, and engaged in “home work”. That makes Lucy’s return to the workforce make sense despite having younger children. Without the income from one of the children old enough to work full time someone has to make up the extra! Poor ten year old Clara meanwhile is at work as a spinner, unable to have the same educational advantage as her parents did. Once the younger children got older though Emily found her trade, which turned out to be dressmaking, a job she could do sat down and at home.
In 1903 Clara married Edward Turner and left home to start her own family, and her story ends there as she and Edward are buried up at Lumbutts. The following year Lucy died aged 65. She left behind a reasonable amount of money, just shy of £400, so it seems the family’s fortunes had turned around a little over time. Emily, Alice and John Henry stayed together. Emily kept making dresses, Alice kept on weaving, and John Henry kept on collecting tickets on the railway. He was apparently a very popular person amongst travellers and in 1917 was promoted to foreman porter.
Unfortunately this promotion came late…or maybe it was symbolic to allow his sisters to collect a better pension? John Henry was sick in the same way as his father, with consumption. He died in January 1918 at the age of 45.
Emily and Alice’s story runs longer, but with less detail – the sisters kept to themselves and don’t seem to have been active in civic life at all. They stayed in their house at 7 Knowlwood Road right up until the end of both their lives. Alice died first, in 1935 at the age of 71. On the 1939 Register Emily was still in the house, now with the widowed Clara as company. Emily eventually died in 1947 at the age of 84. And Clara? She died in 1958, aged 88. We told you the women had long lives in this family!